Either your year-end is coming up in a few weeks or a few months from now, it is always a good idea to start early on preparing your accounting information. This will save you and your accountant a lot of headaches and will make filing to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) a lot easier. For most businesses, fiscal year-end typically falls at the end of the calendar year, making it already extremely busy for accountants in the New Year.

This is a checklist that will help you prepare and plan out the year-end tasks ahead of time. Avoid the last minute stress and prepare all your accounting documents early.

• A copy of your Quickbooks database. If you are using cloud accounting, please invite us to your account
• Last year’s trial balance to ensure that last year’s financial statement amounts have not been altered
• Bank statements (along with cancelled cheques), credit card statements, loans and line of credit statements
• All revenue source documents for the fiscal year. This would include all invoices issued to customers and cash register tapes
• All expense source documents for the year. This would include all invoices paid to vendors.
• Cash on hand amount at year-end
• Account receivable list (customers that you billed that you have not collected from yet) and accounts payable list (vendors that you still owe that already serviced your business), if applicable
• Cost of inventory with details of inventory items at year-end
• Capital assets purchases and disposals during the fiscal year
• The latest government correspondence (i.e. GST/HST, Payroll deductions, WSIB)
• Lease agreements, finance contracts and loan agreements
• Payments or withdrawals made by shareholder
• List of any employee benefit to report (i.e. company vehicle)
• List of insurance policy amounts and dates of expiry.
• A copy of last year’s financial statements
• A copy of last year’s corporate tax return, along with Notice of Assessment